Adrian Chen

It's New Years Eve and not too much is going on on the internet so let's contemplate The Most Important Question In The World: "Who would win if every country sent their leader to fight to the death?" Yesterday a user on Reddit posed the question that every stoned college sophomore home on winter break asks himself when ambling to the corner store to get some Pop Chips not because he's even that hungry but just to get out of the house for a minute or two.

The resulting thread is pretty enlightening, though not nearly as entertaining as Reddit's hypothetical knife fight between every president in U.S. history. The obvious favorite in world leader Thunderdome would be Russia's lion-killing president Vladimir Putin, who, if you go by his PR photos, spends every waking moment accomplishing feats of endurance and courage. But he actually turns out to be a relatively weak candidate, as internet researcher David Weinberg points out. Putin's been a badass for so many decades now that he's probably got weird back pains and strange rashes. Plus, Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov looks like two linebackers mushed together.

How would Obama fare? Given that he's quit smoking, gets regular exercise and is probably energized by his reelection, I'd say he'd last at least until the top 20, though his cooly rational fighting style might leave him open to a sucker punch by the Pope, who you know would fight dirty. First to get picked off would be Queen Elizabeth—sorry, that's just physics.